Arising from: J. B. Silk et al. Nature 437, 1357–1359 (2005); Silk et al. reply

Silk et al. report that adult chimpanzees show no difference in their choices in a situation where one choice benefits a familiar conspecific and the other does not¹. From this, they conclude that chimpanzees are indifferent to the welfare of unrelated group members. But without additional data confirming that chimpanzees do choose differently in circumstances in which a difference would be expected, the authors cannot conclude that there is no difference in their scenario. How chimpanzees react to the welfare of unrelated group members remains an open question.

1. Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada

Correspondence to: Richard J. Beninger¹ Email: beninger@post.queensu.ca

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